sacrifice: work

most times i just don't understand people.

work.
it doesn't ever seem to change, the higher a person is in the chain of command, the more they are willing to do to the person below them so they can have more money.
take my job, their 2 top guys in our warehouse, pardon me if i' can't remember their titles, but i believe the #1 guy (Dan Benthal) is the warehouse super and the guy below him (Jim Bolig) is the warehouse manager.
over the last year they keep implementing things here and there that we can and can't do. these measures are to help the warehouse save money and to insure they get their bonuses.
at my work level, we have never had a bonus. at the end of each year they give us a raise, baised on plants near us. of course they don't include facilities east of us (towards Chicago) and they love to throw some facilities which have been out-sourced. when i first started, we would get $0.45 increase at the end of the year, 8 years later it's down to $0.23.
they tell us do to cost increase, they have to cut us back. but they never seem to tell us what they got. i mean they cut cost so they can get their raise and their bonus while we get screwed.

i have thought from time to time about finding another job. the company i work for, 3M, i like. it's the facility i work for i can't stand. the last 2 years i have kind of forged an alliance with one of my supervisors. never did like that guy too much (DJ) but after he had his (5) by-pass surgery, he has been a different person.
the other supervisor (Olga) it seems that whenever she is my boss she is just trying to get rid of me. anything from putting me down in front of people (ok, that did happen once, but won't again) to lying to me about how something happened. this woman just seems out to get me and anyone else that has had extensive time out using FMLA (Family Medical Leave Act put in by the government allows an employee upto 480 hours of missed time paid or unpaid without any damage to employee's attandence for time missed; basically put). see, the last few years have been bad ones for me.

2002 i injured my back at work, i still worked everyday, missing just some time and continued working.

2003, in July i spent 8 days in the hospital due to Cellulitus in my left leg. docs were nice enough to tell me weeks later, that if i would have gone in the hospital a day later than i did, i would have lost my left leg from the knee down. emotionally, that is still tuff to get a handle on. but i survived and return to work slowly. i fought back to work as hard as i could. my job requires standing for most of the 8 hours, only sitting on break on lunch. so having problems with my left leg, i put too much pressure on my right and gave myself knee problems that still bother me from time to time. it took nearly 6 months before i was able to work at full strength again. but i still have problems from time to time and that part of the leg looks different from the rest....something else that this much time later is still tuff to get used to.

2004, just 4 months after getting over the left leg problem, i was in a car accident.
i still have emotional problems with that accident and the physical problems will probably be with me the rest of my life. the posts in my blog from the start thru Oct - 04 will explain more of what i have goone thru with the pain.

good luck / bad luck, i have had enough that i'm afraid to have anything real good happen to me, as something does, something bad happens not long after. for 3 years in a row, it kept getting worse, it scare me sometimes hoping i would win the lottery.

so, back to work and the wrath of management against FMLA cases.
shit, i haven't used any FMLA since October and from July thru October, each month i only used 3 days for the procedures for my back. but they look at it as time missed that they paid for. we do get benefits to take care of this kind of stuff, but the moment you use it and miss time and/or obtain work retrictions, it feels like an uphill battle. i have been restiction free since Dec. 2, '05.
i've been trying and have been doing well.

as work has been changing things, sometimes they tell us. when they make a change in orderfilling, the orderfillers are told or are the only ones that listen. when you work in receiving for most of the time you are there, you pay attention, but sometimes the oderfilling stuff is easy to forget when you don't order fill. well, in 8 years, i have spent more time in recieving than i have any where. so, now i orderfill a couple of days a week and have been getting yelled at, so to speak, that i don't know these new things. funny thing is, i ask other orderfillers and they didn't know either. once again i can feel managements pressure thru Olga.

DJ on the other hand, applies the pressure but also tries to help. DJ and Olga are the 2 shift supervisors we have. when Olga came to the shift, she rode me hard as she was my new boss. as my restrictions changed during the summer, DJ got me under him cause he could tell that i was trying. DJ also told me that beginning the first of the year, the supervisors were gonna switch what they were responsible for. so i put in a rotation form (we can every 6 months). DJ told me the other day that i will be based under him again.

i don't kiss anyone's ass. never have, never will as it is not the way i am. guess that has been instilled in me by bosses that pushed me to do more. i have heard too many times that i am 'too smart' to be doing this kind of stuff. without the college paper to say that, i'm kind of left in limbo as far as what people will allow me to do. i don't think i', that smart, i just like to learn, i'm an information junkie. people have sugested i go into computers, but i like computers and don't want to make that a career, it's just a hobby.
i would like to go back sometime to school, improve the computer knowledge i have and increase my writing skills.
i guess a lot of what holds me back on that is the lack of money in the bank.
see, i have a bad habit of not saving money. the last time i had some extra cash in the bank, i spent 8 days in the hospital and after that ate thru what i had saved. i work for a good company with great benefits and right now i need those benefits.
but i have thought often about leaving as i feel brain dead working for 3M. they ask us out opinions from time to time to makes us feel like we have an input, but they never act on them. the only ideas they act on are their ideas that they suggest to us.

so, sacrifice. yeah, i have sacrificed a lot of who i am to work for this company, but they have given me some in return. i'm not rich, but finding $18/hour right now isn't that easy. but like everything, i need to try. it seems to come down to the will power part.